maria 's Profile

The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The value
is in the other people. If we start to believe that the Internet itself
is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people
and making ourselves into idiots.

There
is a pedagogical connection between the culture of Artificial Intelligence
and the strange allure of anonymous collectivism online. Google's
vast servers and the Wikipedia are both mentioned frequently as
being the startup memory for Artificial Intelligences to come.
Larry Page is quoted via a link presented to me by popurls this
morning (who knows if it's accurate) as speculating that an AI
might appear within Google within a few years. George Dyson has
wondered if such an entity already exists on the Net, perhaps perched
within Google. My point here is not to argue about the existence
of Metaphysical entities, but just to emphasize how premature and
dangerous it is to lower the expectations we hold for individual
human intellects.

In the last year or two the trend has been to remove the scent
of people, so as to come as close as possible to simulating the appearance
of content emerging out of the Web as if it were speaking to us as
a supernatural oracle. This is where the use of the Internet crosses
the line into delusion.

Myspace is a richer, multi-layered, source of information than the
Wikipedia, although the topics the two services cover barely overlap.
If you want to research a TV show in terms of what people think of
it, Myspace will reveal more to you than the analogous and enormous
entries in the Wikipedia.

A voice should be sensed as a whole.

When you see the context in which something was written and you
know who the author was beyond just a name, you learn so much more
than when you find the same text placed in the anonymous, faux-authoritative,
anti-contextual brew of the Wikipedia.

the question of whether a collective can be

smart is so fascinating. Accuracy in a text is not enough. A desirable


text is more than a collection of accurate references. It is also


an expression of personality.